Many people lack a factual understanding of events in our region because the media report them inadequately. We blog here because our daughter Malki, murdered at the age of 15 in a restaurant massacre in Jerusalem, was a victim of jihadist hatred and barbarism. For jihadism and terrorism to end in Israel, New York, Madrid, London and everywhere else, people first need to understand the scale on which it is happening and why. This ongoing war is killing us.

Saturday, September 14, 2013

14-Sep-13: Memo to Secretary of State Kerry: Your staff need some urgent guidance

Secretary Kerry speaks to the media about a deal
with Russia on Syria, this past Thursday
[Image Source: Reuters/Larry Downing]

First, it gives you an opportunity to finally respond to an open letter which was sent to you on August 13, 2013, by a group called Bereaved Families for Peace and Justice. It respectfully asks you for an urgent meeting for reasons that are stated in the letter. (We are two of the signatories to that letter.) In case this does not ring any bells, we suggest one of your staff people might review its contents [here] and remind you of what we and a dozen other families wrote there.

Unfortunately your office has not yet responded, though your spokesperson, Marie Harf, did say acknowledge in a media briefing the day we sent it that it had been received [we refer here to what else she said].

Your diligent and thoughtful ambassador in Tel Aviv met with four of us some weeks ago in the US embassy, and explained that for now that was as much as we could expect from the State Department. Now that you are back in Israel, it seems to us that this would be a good time to schedule a short face-to-face conversation.

Pew Research's most recent poll just a few days ago [we reported on ithere] says the Moslem segment (i.e. the vast majority) of the Palestinian Arab public wholeheartedly favors what Pew calls "suicide bombing" acts (a very bad name to give to acts of premeditated murder)... so long as they target Israelis.

Unjustly freeing convicted terrorists is perceived by their side as a vindication of the terrorist acts that put them behind bars in the first place. Why would anyone want to feed that blood-lust?

Americans have been among the victims of these terrorists. The State Department would surely want to understand this better so that it can stop the process, right? We want to help.

Third: Most of the Israelis and Americans whom we have asked about this in the past month have been surprised - even astonished - to know that your office has an unexpected view of how to characterize the slayers of elderly Holocaust survivors andmurderers of American citizens who were released in the first of those tranches on August 13, 2013. That was the day an American journalist asked Marie Harf, the deputy spokesperson in the State Department, this straight-forward question:

Do you have any thoughts or position on whether these people who are going to be released [today] are political prisoners or are they terrorists?

We hope you find this hard to believe. We certainly did. Would it make sense for someone in your entourage to check out this video of the exchange between them? Despite our repeated and polite enquiries during this past month, it appears to us that no one in the US administration is willing to admit that they have taken a position on this serious matter - at any rate, no one who was willing to speak to us, or for the record.

Meanwhile, those first 26 unrepentant terrorists walked free. Exactly as we and others feared, they walked straight into a series of official Mahmoud Abbas-hosted PA receptions where they were despicably feted as heroes.We would very much like to discuss this with you as well, if you have some time tomorrow. Please have someone email us, and we will do our best to fit in with your tight agenda.For what it's worth, the Bereaved Families for Peace and Justice group asked our own government here in Jerusalem for a meeting on this same vexing matter of letting loose the unrepentant convicted killers. So far, we have the same success rate in getting a response from them as we have from Washington.

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THIS ONGOING WAR is not part of the activity of the Malki Foundation which was founded by us, Frimet and Arnold Roth of Jerusalem, on September 9, 2001. But it is inspired by the same tragic circumstances. The Malki Foundation (also known by its Hebrew name: Keren Malki) is a memorial to the life of our daughter, Malki. She's in the photo below this paragraph. Malki was murdered at the age of 15 in a massacre in the centre of Jerusalem carried out by Hamas.

Beyond its function as a remembrance of a beautiful life, the foundation provides tangible, concrete, invaluable support daily to several thousand Israeli families from every part of the religious and socio-economic spectrum: Christian, Moslem, Jewish, Druze and others who care at home for a seriously disabled child.

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It's the charitable organization we, the bloggers who produce This Ongoing War, established in 2001 in memory of our murdered daughter. Her name is Malki.

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This Ongoing War: About this blog

Many people lack a factual understanding of events in our region because the media often report them inadequately. Our daughter Malki, murdered at the age of 15 in a restaurant massacre in Jerusalem, was a victim of jihadist hatred and barbarism. For jihadism and terrorism to end in Israel, in New York, in Madrid, in London and everywhere else, people first need to understand the scale on which it is happening. This ongoing war is killing us.